"They all just did fantastic," Branson said at the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Summit in Washington. He added that Virgin Galactic is "thinking about what we can do to upstage that one."

Musk may have set the bar impossibly high. SpaceX captivated the world last week by executing the first-ever launch of its new rocket, called Falcon Heavy. SpaceX then one-upped itself by guiding two of the Falcon Heavy's first-stage rocket boosters to simultaneously land upright back on Earth.

Always the showman, Musk pulled off another marketing coup by sending his personal Tesla roadster deep into space aboard the rocket. A dummy dressed in a spacesuit is sitting at the wheel, with David Bowe's "Space Oddity" blaring on the car stereo.